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Standing Up for British Liberalism

We’ve respected diversity to the point of losing our shared values and history.

By

James Bloodworth

Dec. 10, 2014 3:06 p.m. ET

“The liberal lacks confidence in himself and in his vision of life,” the American writer Lewis Mumford wrote. The year was 1940, and Mumford had in mind the moral cowardice that up to that point had characterized the West’s response to Hitler’s rise. But he could also have been writing about our age, when too many self-proclaimed liberals struggle to comprehend insane and suicidal doctrines, such as radical Islam, and are often reluctant to defend the liberal idea against them.